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MiSoC workshop on the economics of Higher Education

Invitation only academic workshop on the economics of Higher Education with international speakers.

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Royal Statistical Society workshop: Ethnic & Racial Harassment, Mental Health and Ethnic Concentration

Dr Laia Becares, University of Manchester - Health impacts of ethnic concentration; Dr Alita Nandi, University of Essex - Ethnic and racial harassment and mental health: resilience factors and ripple effects; Chair: Prof Gwilym Pryce Preceded by tea & coffee Attendance is free and open to all, whether fellows of the RSS or not, but pre-registration is required.

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Monday Afternoon Seminar: George B. Ploubidis

LIVING LONGER BUT NOT NECESSARILY HEALTHIER: EVIDENCE FROM THE UK’S POPULATION BASED SURVEYS

The 20th century witnessed significant improvements in health in most countries including substantial increases in survival to older ages and large reductions in late age mortality. The continuing rise in life expectancy is undoubtedly one of the great successes of public health, but has also raised the question of how healthily the gained years of life will be spent. We use data from UK’s birth cohorts, other longitudinal studies and repeated cross sectional surveys to investigate competing theories of the joint progress of health and mortality. Sullivan’s method and regression based approaches were employed exploiting their different underlying assumptions to empirically test the compression, expansion and dynamic equilibrium of morbidity hypotheses. We found evidence for expansion of morbidity in the working age population, whereas a more complex pattern emerged in the older population, indicating a potential structural break between generations. The opportunities and challenges of employing longitudinal and life course studies to empirically test competing theories of ageing and the implications of the recent slowdown in the increase of life expectancy in the UK will be discussed.

George is Professor of Population Health and Statistics at the UCL Department of Social Science and currently holds the posts of Director of Research and Chief Statistician at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies. Prior to joining UCL he held posts at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the University of Cambridge.

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Can transactional data help to understand human behaviour?

Abstract: Digital technology is opening up a new era in the understanding of human behaviour. An ever increasing amount of machine recorded information is being generated as we traverse our daily lives, touching on a range of human behaviours from financial activity (via banking records) to eating habits (via supermarket loyalty cards and digital food diaries). The information that can be gained from these transactional data sources can go beyond self-reports that are traditionally used to measure real world behaviours. My research focuses on creating an ethical, privacy-preserving framework to use transactional records of human behaviour such as banking and retail data for public good. Based on my ongoing work with Boots, Tesco and banking data, I will talk about possibilities and challenges of working with large transactional datasets for research on human behaviour. I will present several ongoing projects in the domains of food choice, personality and wellbeing. Further, I will talk about projects on linking transactional data to longitudinal population studies data and associated possibilities and challenges, as well as about ethics of research with big data.

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May 2018 EUROMOD Course

The aim of the course is to provide academics, policy practitioners and other interested users with an introduction to the concepts, structure and functioning of EUROMOD. EUROMOD is a state-of-the art tax-benefit microsimulation model linking micro-data from household surveys and policy legislation in a single user interface. It allows for complex policy impact analysis, such as evaluations of policy reforms in terms of poverty, inequality, work incentives and government budgets, assessments of EU-wide policies or estimation of the impact of changing population characteristics on the redistributive effect of existing policies.EUROMOD is now expanded to cover all 28 EU Member States.

The course will cover the basics of tax-benefit microsimulation, the logic and structure behind EUROMOD, working with EUROMOD’s user interface, input data, EUROMOD’s modelling ‘language’ and using documentation. The course combines lectures with live demonstrations of the model. Participants also have the opportunity to carry out a number of hands-on exercises to test and refine their understanding of the model.

If you are interested in attending or would like more information, please complete this application form. The closing date for applications is 28 February 2018. All candidates will be informed whether their applications have been accepted by 19 March 2018.

Event

Introduction to Understanding Society using Stata